Martian Eggplant

So, I’ve known for a while that my sister is cosplaying YURA-sama from the visual kei J-rock band Psycho le Cemu (what the heck, my sister hasn’t sent me a picture of YURA-sama for my new pc yet?!), and I found out recently that her friend Lisa is cosplaying Lida from the same group. Then I find out that another friend is cosplaying SEEK and another Daishi.  Which leaves Aya and no more friends (willing) to cosplay him.  Who gets volunteered? Me.

This might not be a bad thing… were pink not my least favorite color and frilly dresses my least favorite garments on the face of the earth.  Nonetheless, I agreed to be Aya for their PLC group. Probably at ACEN, certainly sometime in the near future.

This is where I need your help, Eng201 class! I don’t know which of Aya’s outfits to do! As I said, pink and frills are totally contrary to my nature, so I’m having a hard time picking one that will look nice.  Let me know in a comment if you have an opinion. Thanks!

Prism

Megatron

Omoide Aruki

Michi no Sora

Love is Dead

Gekiai Merry-Go-Round

Ai no Uta

If you want to hear something by Psycho le Cemu, listen to the second-to-last song on my mixtape that I made for class. That song is PLC’s Gekiai Merry-Go-Round. 

It’s time to start thinking about Halloween! Hooray! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays (go figure) of the year. I love making autumn food, carving jack-o-lanterns, and making and wearing costumes…

This year, I’ll be wearing my Gypsy Queen dress for Halloween. It’s a cross between a bellydancer’s costume and a wench’s costume, all done up in shades of red, brown, black, and (a tiny bit of) pink, and it is probably my favorite Renaissance piece that I own… and considering I’ve worn it to the Faire in Bristol for the last three years, instead of switching to a new costume each year as I’ve done in the past, that says something.

But since I promised that my next post would include some info about a costume I’m currently working on, I’ll tell you a bit about Tula. Tula is from a cartoon show from the 90s that most people seem to have never heard of: The Pirates of Dark Water. This particular show happened to be my sister’s favorite cartoon show of her childhood and Tula was her favorite character, and so I am making her Tula’s outfit (and hair, via a wig) for a Christmas present. It won’t be much of a surprise, since I have to do some sizing on her (especially where the wig is concerned… we are the same size, but she has a lot more hair than I do, so any wig sized on me will be too small to accomodate her hair), but it has a lot of sentimental value for her and I know she’ll really like it.

Since in episode six (yes, I’m such a geek that I know this), Tula says she made herself a new outfit out of some silks she’d found in the Wraith, I bought some bright pink silky material to make most of the costume, and I bought some green cotton for the contrast, since the contrast has to be stiffer to make that belt/waist cincher she wears. I already had extra peltex (peltex is interfacing used to make things like hats and handbags stiff) to make the armor/top with, though at the moment I don’t have any bias tape for the edges or paint for the armor. Overall, it’s a simple design (for someone who’s made a nearly identical outfit for a friend before), and I don’t anticipate it taking me very long, with the exception of the jewelry, and the gold bits in the wig.

I’ve recently rewatched approximately 2/3 of The Pirates of Dark Water, and I’m sad that it was never finished… sad that it wasn’t finished, but glad that my sister kept her tapes of the one-time Cartoon Network PODW marathon… Being a total sci-fi/fantasy cartoon geek, I think it’s one of the better American cartoons ever made. I wish I could find out the end of the story, but by now it’s probably a lost cause. 

This post would not be complete without an eggplant recipe, so here is a link to one for Eggplant-Spinach Curry, since I love curry. Especially curry with eggplant in it. 

Probably the most common question I get in regards to my costumes is "How long does/did it take to make that?"

The best answer I can give is this: a long time.  It is heavily dependent upon the amount of detail in the costume, the fabrics and materials the costume is made from, and whether I can buy any of the parts pre-made or whether I’m making a Masquerade level piece and everything has to be handmade.

A duelist jacket from Utena takes roughly three hours to put together, from the time you pin the pattern to the fabric, to the point where all the pieces are sewn together and the lining and collar are installed. After that, around 20 hook-and-eyes must be hand sewn into the front closure, ribbons must be hand sewn on around every edge, cuffs must be made, false pockets applied, cords made (I’ll explain in a minute), and epaulettes made and attached.  Only once all that is done can the jacket be called finished - and even then it needs a few finishing touches (the duelist rose and rose-holder, for example).  The cords (technically each of these cords is an "aiguillette" but since I can’t even say that, I’m going to leave it at "cord") are made by attaching one end to the appropriate epaulette and super-gluing a brass lamp finial to the other end; then they are pinned into place with the rose and rose-holder.

I can honestly say I have no idea how long a rose holder takes to make, because Llama makes them all, but I do know that they’re made of painted sculpey with a pin attached.

The epaulettes, on the other hand, are a wonderfully amusing story. I will only discuss Juri, Kozue, and Miki’s epaulettes for the moment, because I have no decent pictures of Utena, Nanami, or Touga handy.  Miki’s epaulettes were the easiest to make, because they are simply fabric and craft foam cut into the proper shape and attached with buttons.  Kozue’s are far more complicated, because they involve attaching a flat piece of wood to a sphere with a hole in it (for the seafoam fringe, which is also handmade, to come out).  Juri’s epaulettes are one of our most interesting, because they are made from wood and pvc pipe. (Un)Luckily for us, in each of the art images, Juri’s epaulettes look different; in some images, the lines on the side are etched into them, in others the lines appear to protrude from them, and in still others, the lines appear to be drawn on. So our craft master (aka Uba’s dad) carved the lines in because it was easier than the other designs. All the epaulettes except Miki’s are fully removable so the costumes are washable; since Miki’s epaulettes are fabric and buttons, they are already washable and don’t need to be removed for any reason.

The other thing everyone asks about is Kozue’s (and Anthy’s) crown. How did we get it so perfectly round? How did we get just the right shape? The answer is more pvc pipe. Uba drew the pattern up, and we glued it to the pipe and cut it out before painting it gold. Voila - instant and durable Rose Bride crown.

I promise my next entry will have something to do with a costume I’m currently working on or will include an eggplant recipe. 

I feel that the lyrics to Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku are especially relevent at the moment… we just finished up our Miki/Kozue/Juri photoshoot, and my legs are killing me. And yet the duel music still rings in my head.

Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
Shussei Touroku Senrei Meibo Shibou Touroku
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku
Watashi no Tanjou Zettai Tanjou Mokushiroku…

Empty Movement has the full lyrics and a translation of this song.

In the anime series of Utena, Arisugawa Juri has this unnerving habit of constantly groping Kaoru Miki. Lisa being the less than sane person that she is delights in groping anyone and everyone while wearing her Juri costume.  So when we got up to Agriculture Hall (yes, we use the campus as our Ohtori playground… though it’s a lot of work getting shots without lots of other ‘normal’ students in them) and it was time to pose for pictures, this one just seemed natural.  For the uninitiated, the students of Utena attend the elite private school known as Ohtori Academy, and four (six, really) special students, the student council, get to wear bizarre military style uniforms.  Because I feel like it, here is a link to one of the official "groping" art images, and here is a link to another. Mwah! Utena is such a messed up series, but it’s oh so very fun.

The reason for the uniforms is relatively simple. If by simple you mean extremely bizarre and difficult to understand. The student council members are, in fact, duelists fighting for the power to bring the world revolution.  What this means, exactly, is unclear, but under the orders of a mysterious force called Ends of the World, they fight for the Rose Bride (Himemiya Anthy) who can grant this power. And that’s the simple version.  By the end of the series everything is pleasantly turned upside down.

At any rate, Anthy is not the only Rose Bride. In the third arc of the show, it becomes obvious that just about anyone can become a Rose Bride. Kaoru Kozue does it for Miki, and Takatsuki Shiori does it as well.  My sister makes a fine Rose Bride Kozue. 

Kaoru Kozue means fragrant tree branch, so we also took some photos of our Kozue with some tree branches.  Kozue is Miki’s twin sister (coincidentally or not, >.> my sister and I are also twins), and their names have very similar meanings, though Miki refers to a tree trunk as opposed to the branches.  We were originally picked for Miki and Kozue because we are twins, and it just made sense to have twins cosplay the twins.  As it turns out, Miki is one of my favorite characters for his own merit, though I daresay my sister is appalled by Kozue’s behavior.  Kozue is quite literally scary, but my sister looks much less so than the original source… She kept wanting only to carry her black rose, but Rose Bride Kozue occurs after the Black Rose Duels, so I made her take my blue roses for this shot. Besides, the black rose looked a lot more fake than the blue (or orange) ones.

Probably the most noticeable thing about Juri is how amazingly emo she is.  Granted, she does have a lot to be sad about, but Lisa is about as far from emo as one can get.  What’s even more amazing is that she can occasionally pull off Juri’s emoness in a photo.  This is one of the few photos of her in this pose where she wasn’t laughing hysterically.  I suppose my urging her to "be more emo!" didn’t help the situation any…

The only thing that could have made this better was if she had remembered her "emo locket" with the picture of Shiori inside. I can’t wait till Sarah’s Shiori costume and what’s-his-face’s Ruka costume are done, because then we can do some awesome shoots with the three of them. I’m not looking forward to making the Ruka wig, though, because I know I’m going to have to thread individual extensions through the plastic scalp on it to get the right effect. *sigh*

And here is Miki with the tree trunk, as promised. The shine on this wig looks so amazingly photoshopped into that perfect ‘anime shine’ even when we don’t do anything to doctor the pictures.  This photo is a perfect example of this effect.  I love my camera.

I don’t feel that there is that much I can say about this picture that hasn’t already been said about the matching Kozue picture… 

At any rate, from there (a little ways from Van Hise), we headed up to the old Observatory on the hill, because observatories and planetariums also feature heavily in Utena. We must soon take our Anthy (and Nanami too) up there and take some more pictures… Anthy and the observatory… creepy!

I’m going to finish this already-too-long post up with some pictures taken in various places around campus. All these images are so fresh that I haven’t had time to make galleries for them on Chocolate Roses. Hooray!